


The Water God's Consort

by safarialuna



Series: Kinkalot 2020 [5]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, BAMF Merlin (Merlin), Bottom Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Dubious Consent, Kinkalot 2020, M/M, POV Merlin (Merlin), Prince Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Sigils, Tentacle Sex, Tentacle Tuesday, Tentacles, Top Merlin (Merlin), Water God Merlin, Water Spirit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:07:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26115427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/safarialuna/pseuds/safarialuna
Summary: Suddenly, the water god's body suffused with liquid sparks and his tendrils shivered in pleasure; this blood tasted like perfumed wine, like apples at the height of harvest. His tendrils wound like vines around the man’s unconscious body—legs, chest, hands, neck—constantly weaving and turning. The human’s head drooped like a wilted flower as he was hung in the air.“Why do you taste so sweet?”
Relationships: Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Series: Kinkalot 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1862053
Comments: 26
Kudos: 226
Collections: Kinkalot 2020





	The Water God's Consort

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Tentacle Tuesday! 🐙
> 
> Thank you, Team Sorcerers, for coming up with this idea. The world needs more tenacles.
> 
> "Tentacles" Kinkalot Bingo Fill

_Another sacrifice_ , the spirits whispered, the chattering of leaf-faces and clicking of stick-arms filled the air.

The water god watched from atop the lake’s surface unseen as a skittish horse pulled a wagon. A pair of men dragged out a naked man. 

The water god sniffed, unamused.

After a rugged blow to the man's face and a stab of a knife to the stomach, the humans left the man to bleed naked on the forest floor. The water god curled his lip. He wasn’t some ocean dragon tempted by putrid human blood. 

He appeared. Tiny spirits swirled around his ankles. Creatures poked out from behind birch trees. Pearly everlasting bloomed in bright globes where his bare feet had tread. 

His robes rippled with every movement; many layers of highly-patterned silk in all shades of blue, soft-shell turquoise and starless cobalt, shining in slivered stripes. His studded earrings—given to him by previous nymph lovers—gleamed in the spirit light. 

The water was connected to him; tendrils of the lake slithered out and rubbed against the blood on the man’s cheek like cat’s tongues. Another tendril poked the man’s hand. He reached down. It was a sigil of a bird. He slipped it into the pocket located in his outermost robe. 

Suddenly, the water god's body suffused with liquid sparks and his tendrils shivered in pleasure; this blood tasted like perfumed wine, like apples at the height of harvest. His tendrils wound like vines around the man’s unconscious body—legs, chest, hands, neck—constantly weaving and turning. The human’s head drooped like a wilted flower as he was hung in the air.

His iridescent scaled finger caught a speck of blood on the man’s jaw. Not a wound remained on that golden skin. He sighed as he tasted the blood directly—it numbed his lips and tongue.

The human groaned, a tortured whimper of a mortal who was pulled from a lulling sleep that connected life to the hereafter. “This must be a dream.”

“Why do you taste so sweet?” The water god brushed a tendril across the man’s lips.

“I’m born of magic,” the man said. He shifted. He winced. He glanced down at his body covered in wet, hard tendrils and blinked hard.

The spirits hummed like buzzing bees.

“My name is Arthur Pendragon, Crown Prince of Camelot. My uncle falsely accused me of murdering my father. He sentenced me to be married to the water god of the Forest of Fortüg.”

“Sentenced to be killed, you mean.”

The princeling’s head jerked up. A thin tendril lifted up his chin and another slipped into the heat of his mouth tasting, drinking. 

“I do not desire to marry and thus become human,” the water god said firmly.

Arthur frowned. He licked the underside of the god’s tendril. “Sounds lonely.”

The water god withdrew his tendril from the man's mouth and cocked his head. He guided a feeler to Arthur’s length, which was weeping from the stimulation. He hovered just above the tip. He locked eyes with the man. “Do you resist?” 

“Do what you will.” The human tilted his head back, cheeks bright like spring blossoms. “Nothing is left of me to break.”

“I’m sure I can find a piece to crack.” He wrapped a thin water-vine around the straining cock, adjusting it to the girth of his own finger. He shucked the tight ring of pressure back and forth, drinking in the way the man’s eyes fluttered. 

“What is your name?” Arthur spoke softly.

“You have not earned the right.” A weave of tendrils curved off of Arthur’s thigh, crawling up to circle the puckered hole. 

“You’re beautiful,” Arthur groaned. 

“So would be your death.”

Arthur’s breath hitched into a strangled cry as the weave plunged into his hole, spreading and growing, probing deep. “If you marry me, you—ah—wouldn’t be lonely.”

“It would be your fate to die if you were unfaithful.”

“I would—” Arthur's body shook as the tendrils worked his cock and writhed overfull in his channel, with another bundle licking at his balls “—pledge myself to you. I’d give you my word.”

Arthur tensed. The water god quickly latched a tentacle onto the end of the princeling’s tip. The man cried out and the water god sucked up every drop of the seed, the feelers undulating in ecstasy at the feast. 

He felt invincible with this man’s magic inside him. “No. I shall live off your energy until you are a husk.” The water god smirked as the tendrils continued to thrash deep inside Arthur.

“One week,” Arthur said quickly, in between his gasping moans of pleasure. “If prove my worth at your side, you will marry me and aid me in taking back my kingdom.”

“Seven days? No. Fifty years.”

“I’ll be dead by then!”

“Fine. Twenty.”

“Three months.”

“No.”

“A year and a day,” Arthur said. “I will provide you with a drop of my blood every day, of my free will. If I do not prove my worthiness as your consort, you may use me ’til I die.”

“If you do prove worthy, I would die a human life.”

“And a life without loneliness.”

The god shrugged and lifted a hand. The feelers fell away like melted water. The man collapsed into his arms, and though Arthur’s stance was unsteady, his eyes now had a hard glint to them. 

“What else can you offer?” the god said, an arm of silk wrapped awkwardly around Arthur, whose body smeared the robes with water-slime and mud. 

“Stories,” said Arthur, swallowing. “I have heard tales from travelling men and soothsayers, bards and royalty, from across the sea and beyond the mountains. Knowledge of the world outside the forest.”

 _This man could never satisfy me_ , the water god thought ruefully. He didn’t mind stories—maybe he’d enjoy them—and he’d receive the blood that he now craved as a dragon did gold. 

“Very well,” he decided. 

His many earrings popped away like bubbles. He trailed his finger up to the princeling’s cheeks and carefully collected a tear from each of the man’s eyes. 

One of sadness and grief, a reminder of things past.

One of joy and relief, a promise of things to come. 

They fastened themselves to his ears. He dipped his head into searing kiss with the human—an exchange of secretions. 

Arthur appeared dazed, as if he still believed this all to be a dream. He gave a sort of wobbly grin—the god supposed narrowly escaping death, being overstimulated by spirit tendrils, and forming a damning contract with a water god would make any human question reality, even a heroic prince. 

_Tomorrow, he will realise the mistake he has made_ , the god thought grimly. 

“You may call me Emrys. I shall listen to your stories and relish in your magic.”

*

The next morning, Emrys expected dread, horror, _something_. 

Instead, Arthur’s eyes simply widened. He took in the robes that now draped over his form and he relaxed into a resigned smile. 

The water god waited for some proper, _human_ reaction. 

It never came. 

*

Months past. Since their contract, Emrys no longer touched the princeling except for the blood offering. His feelers writhed in agony over only a single drop with every sun turn, but he restrained.

*

One day, he caught the human staring at his tentacles like one does at a dancing flame. The god’s face grew hot. He peered up at the sun mottled through the trees and remembered how it had rained the night before. By all accounts, he should not be overheated.

*

He listened to all of Arthur’s stories—some sang at twilight, some whispered under stars, others spoke boldly with merry laughing and winsome grins. The prince would be wrapped up in one of his lake-robes like he was born to wear it and Emrys thumbed the sigil in his secret pocket. He memorised every bump and curve like he would a lover’s hand. 

*

“Only one more day,” Arthur said. He offered his pricked thumb to Emrys. “Here.” 

Emrys bowed his head to directly savour its taste, his earrings sending prisms of light onto Arthur’s hand in the first breath of dawn. 

Emrys wanted all of this man. He burned with it like fire underwater. He feared he might tear himself apart from such hunger. 

And yet, for the first time—at the thought of killing this human, of exploiting his magic, of causing him sadness— loneliness clawed at him, a trapped animal gnawing on his raw, tender insides. 

The weight crashed down like ten-thousand pools, all resting on his watery heart.

 _Choose him,_ the sprits agreed. _Love him._

How dreadfully human.

*

The water god of Fortüg was never found again.

At around the same time, a prince sworn to be dead had returned to reclaim his right to the throne. He brought with him a strange man, who wore earrings of ever-shining light and a royal sigil of a merlin on his cobalt cloak.


End file.
